Happy Easter!

What a glorious Easter Sunday it is here.  My thermometer is reading 72 degrees.  It is sunny and warm.  Glorious.  I wore my New Look 6934 to church this morning.  We were treated to  wonderful music (the drummer at church is hot by the way),  a great play and a nice message.

Here I am with my girls after church.  My lawn needs to be mowed….mom, tell dad I need him to come home.  I had planned to have the dress hemmed, pressed and hanging in my closet by Friday, but thanks to the my little nugget on the left I have been moving slowly since Thursday.  She mucked me out Thursday (not intentional), and I ended up with bruised or possibly cracked ribs.  I have been moving pretty slowly since.  Anyway, this morning before church I was hemming my dress.

The dress went together really easily.  It is a nicely drafted pattern and it has clearly written directions.  When asked, Doug (the hot drummer) said it made me look thick at the waist…..he was right (note to self, don’t ask Doug anything unless you want an honest answer).  See, he was right.  Without the sweater, I look thick waisted.

I still think the style is cute, but for me I have to wear it with a sweater or jacket.  Maybe that’s why there’s a jacket included in the pattern.    I had to shave off about 1/4″ at the armscye to get the back of the neckline to lay flat.  Thanks hot drummer, engineer guy for the pattern help.  Worked like a charm.

Side, non-waist thickening view according to my honest critic.  You know, that guy I married 31 years ago this Wednesday.

So, I don’t know if I will make this again.  I think we are all in agreement that the high waist line style is not for me.    Anyone want a cute dress and jacket pattern, already cut out in size 14, with 1/4” trimmed off the back armscye and 1″ seam allowances added to all side seams?  Speak up if you do.

Happy Easter.

He has risen.

Easter Dress

Easter is a week and a half away and I have decided I need a new dress.  This friend is progress, as I usually think that a new Easter dress would be nice the night before Easter.   Even more, I have the muslin done.  More progress!  New Look 6934 gets the honor this year.  I think I bought it two years ago with an Easter dress in mind. Better late than never.
Here is my muslin I did this morning.  I use to H A T E making muslins (yes, I was shouting).  But now, I really enjoy it.  I really like working through the pattern without the stress of cutting into my fashion fabric.  I am always on the look out for old sheets.  I really like using old sheets for muslin.  There is absolutely no stress in cutting up old sheets.

Anyway, back to the muslin.  I cut a size 14 and it fits pretty good just as it is.  The back neck needs a tuck because it gaps a bit and I will add 1″ side seams to the fashion fabric to add wiggle room if I need it.  Here is the fabric I am going to use.  It is a stretch cotton border print from Vogue Fabrics.  I bought it last year for an Easter dress, you know the one I thought about making the night before Easter, yes that one.

The bodice will be solid black and the skirt will be the floral print.  What do you think?  I think I want to cut it out right now, but I need to wait ’til Doug gets home so he can help me with the back neck issue.  So hard to fit back issues by yourself. As for the pattern, it is drafted very nicely and very straightforward.  Not sure if I will make the jacket to go with this dress.  If I have time, I probably will make the short one.

On my last post Jsews asked for a bit more information on the scarf pattern.  Here is what the spiral looks like.

You make the pattern by folding a piece of paper in quarters.  The corner where the folds meet is the center of your circle.  From the corner draw a 8 1/4″ line for the outer circumference arc of the flounce.  Draw a smaller quarter circle 3 3/4″ from corner.  this is your inner circumference.  Does that make sense?

Happy sewing everyone.  Anyone making Easter dresses?

What I’ve been up to

I made this scraf.

This was the February project for my ASG neighborhood group.  You might have seen the pattern in Threads a few months ago.    It takes 2 yards of fabric.  I scrounged around in my stash and found this fabric.  Honestly, it has been in my stash for probably 10 years.  I bought it at Fabricland in Mount Vernon, WA.  Do we still have Fabriclands in this country?

The scarf is made up of 6 spiral pieces finished with a rolled hem.

Three spirals go on each side of a 4″ x 2 yd piece of fabric.  This fabric was like sewing water.  It could teach someone how to swear, so I decided to hand baste  the spirals to the rectangle.

After I hand basted the spiral pieces, I decided to make a change in the pattern.  The instructions tell you to sandwich the spiral pieces between two 4″ x 2 yd. rectangles.  I decided to just use my  serger and attach the spirals using a rolled hem to just one long rectangle.  I really like how it turned out.  The finished scarf is nice and light, and it was made completely with the serger.

I’ve also been making  zippered bags.  They are a Lazy Girl pattern, and so easy.  This will be perfect for taking things back and forth to my ASG meetings.

I had fabric left over so I made three more.

They need a home.  If you want one, let me know in a comment below.  First 3 people to speak up, get one.  Happy Daylight Savings!

Clearing off the cutting table

That’s what I have been doing, clearing off my cutting table to make way for the jacket project, and I found my second Vogue 8873 all cut out and neatly folded in a pile waiting to be completed. See my first skirt here. The fabric for the second skirt is a knit that looks and feels like suede. I picked it up years ago, from I don’t remember where. I thought the lines and detail of this skirt would be perfect for this fabric. So, I put some college basketball on the radio and sat down at my machine and started sewing…..

Knowing that the fabric might induce skipped stitches, I ran a test strip through the machine…no problems, we are good to go.

As I started to assemble the skirt, I my stitches started to skip…so I changed the needle….still skipping (grrrr), so I rethreaded my machine. Still skiping (Grrrrr), so I tried a different needle, (GRRRRR). No matter what I did I still had skipped stitches. Then I remembered this baby.

If you dont’ have some of this stuff, get some now.  No more skipped stitches!  I continued sewing along, listening to the basketball game and thinking to myself,  I am going to have this skirt done before the game is over, Yay!  Not yay. The very last think to do on this skirt is to attach the yoke and skirt together.  Which I did, smiling to myself, I’m done.  I turned the skirt right side out and tried it on….WWHHAATT????  I mistakenly attached the yoke facing to the skirt and the nap was going in the wrong direction.  Ugh, first I thought about leaving it that way and telling everyone that I did it on purpose because you can do whatever you want to when you sew right? But I couldn’t.  Out came the seam ripper…and by the time I got it taken apart, the game and the post game show were over.  Teach me to be smug.

I finished it up the next morning and wore it to church, I won’t be entering this in the fair, but at least I was able to save it.  Oh and if you are looking for a nice elastic to use in pull on skirts, I used this swim suit elastic and it worked great and is comfy to wear.  It is 3/4″ , with a picot edge, and plush on one side.

I am really happy with how the skirt turned out (sans yoke problems).

So is Kate.  She was not to happy that Sam appeared in my last post and not her though.

I wore it to church on Sunday and then out to a local winery for a Valentines Day Bazaar.  Where we made coasters out of wine labels.  The cute couple in the photo is my niece and her husband.  My valentine is behind the camera.

Next up, 4 more piece work shirts, a scarf for me, and the jacket (always subject to change of course).

 

Fearless February Sew-along

So how can it be February already? Believe me, I am not complaining. January was snowy and cold…really cold…like single digits cold for 3 weeks. Good riddance I say. Last week I read about the Fearless February Sew-along on Victoria’s blog Ten Thousand Hours of Sewing. It struck a chord with me. I often let my fear of making a mistake in the sewing room stop me from starting or sometimes finishing a project. So, I have two goals for my own Fearless February. 1). Finish the Claire Shaeffer tailored jacket I started 5 years ago in a class and 2). try my hand at piece work for a local clothing manufacturer.

I am happy to report that I have made progress on one of the two. On Monday, I called C&C Sutlery. They make and sell Civil War and Indian War period clothing, and I had heard that they were looking for more seamstresses to do piece work for them. They gave me a men’s shirt to sew up as a trial garment. Today I delivered it to them and they were really happy with the work. I have a couple of reasons for doing this….first off, it is a way to possibly subsidise my fabric obsession. I mean, I won’t get rich, but every little bit helps when it comes to fabric accumulation. Secondly, I want to stretch my skills. I want to become a faster, more organized, and more confident sewist. I think this will help. I just need to make sure that I keep time for my sewing because I need to work on my first goal for February, sewing up that jacket. I will keep you posted.

Before I go, I wanted to share with you my Butterick 4989. I picked up this pattern not too long back because I love the look of view B (the long sleeve blue one).

I have this wonderful brown and black wool plaid that I think it would look great made up in this.  Of course I wanted to try it out first before I cut into my beautiful wool, so I pulled out a  rayon/poly (insert icky cheap) fabric  that I picked it up at JoAnns a few years back for .99 cents a yard.  I have enough to make a skirt too.  Yay me.  The fabric is pretty to look at but not really that much fun to sew.  Anyway, moving on.  Here is how it turned out.

I’m not sure if you can tell from this photo, but the fronts are on the bias, so I think it would look really cool with a plaid.  The only changes I made were to shorten the body 1 inch and the sleeves 2 inches.

The fabric misbehaved a lot…here is one of the sleeves after pressing.

I had to give it a stern talking to.

There, that’s better

The color of the jacket is a dark chocolate with pastel slubs.  It reminds me of an Easter basket.

I’m glad I shortened it.

Here is the side view, and Sam.  He was soaking up the sun in the bedroom windows.  I have no idea what he is looking at…maybe he is beseeching God that he won’t get swallowed by my sleeves.  I think I will taper the next ones.

I really like wearing the jacket, but I am wondering if the style is too trending to commit my wool to.  Hmmm….what do you guys think?

I love leftovers

I have a magnet on my fridge that says “Leftovers: bits of food that are kept in the refrigerator until they are old enough to be thrown away!” Thankfully, this doesn’t apply to fabric. Today was a sewing day, and I really wanted to finish up a skirt that has been cut out for a few weeks now, but the leftover fabric from my Rock of Ages Skirt was still on the cutting table….I picked it up and started to put it in my good intentions box, but it rebelled and said, “hey lady, your machine is still set up to sew me….just cut out a tank already and sew me up.” Really, it did. So that is what I did. I pulled out a pile of patterns and decided on this one. Vogue 8536, view C, the sleeveless one.

I had just enough fabric to eek out a size 14.

I had made view E and D a few years ago, and I remember that I wasn’t real crazy about the 2 3/4″ hem. Due to the sheerness of this fabric, and since I didn’t hem the skirt, I didn’t want to hem the top. So I just folded up the hem allowance and cut it out that way.

I trimmed all seam allowances very close to the stitching, and I didn’t line it. I know, living on the edge, that’s me.

Here is the top and skirt together. Now I need one of those body shaper things to wear under it.

Just a handful of this very fun fabric is left.  Yay!  I will cut off the sequins before I put it in the scrap saving bag for cat beds…don’t ask.

Now I think I need to make a cape in silk organza to finish the whole thing off. What do you think? Stay tuned.

One last thing. Today about 30 quail walked across the back patio. I caught these two cuties through my dining room window.

The Rock of Ages Skirt

It is the year of turning 50 for me and two of my best friends.  Last weekend we met up at Sandi’s in Springfield, Oregon for a long weekend. This long weekend included a night out for dinner and the Broadway play Rock of Ages. Of course, without even checking my closet I knew I didn’t have a thing to wear, but I have had my eye on a piece in my stash that would fit the bill. The fabric is a sheer, border, knit sequined fabric. I bought it several years ago and it has been aging well in my stash. Somethings I had to consider before I committed this fabric to a project is, I only had about 1 yard of it, I had to treat it like a border print, and it needed to be lined. Here is a close up of the sequined border (I got my nails done to match).

So this is the bottom of the fabric and there are fewer sequins as you go up the fabric.  I decided to make a one seam skirt, with the seam going up the back, with an elastic waist.  I lined it with black tricot.  I took two measurements, my hip and the length I wanted it.  From there I cut out a rectangle of the fabric and lining.  I sewed the one seam up on both the skirt and the lining and then attached the two at the waist.  I was a little stumped as how to make a nice clean attachment of the elastic at the waist, but I woke up in the middle of the night with the solution (raise your hand if you have ever done that before).  I used the technique that I used here.  Since my fabric was so light, I decided to use lingerie elastic.  The only problem was that I only had white elastic which would show through the fashion fabric.  I didn’t want to run to the store, because the store is at least 30 miles away, and well I just figured I could make do with what I had on hand.  So I decided to dye the elastic the darkest color I could.  I had some teal Jacquard Acid Dye that I had in my lingerie supply bag and it worked great.  It turned my white 3/8″ elastic into dark elastic.

So the skinny (don’t I wish) on the waist treatment is this: 1) sew your elastic ends together to make a circle.  I like to lap the two ends together and sew with a zig-zag stitch the width of the elastic. 2) Sew the lining and the fashion fabric right sides together at the waist, 3) Divide the elastic into fourths and mark. 4) Do the same thing for the skirt waist. 5) Now stitch one edge of the elastic to the inside of the lining at the top of the waist.  Basically, you open the skirt up so you are looking at the wrong side of both the lining and the fashion fabric.  It will look like an open tube with the stitched waist in the middle.  Match up your corresponding waist and elastic markings and attach the elastic right next to the waist seam on the lining side, 6) Once the elastic is stitched, turn the lining to the inside of the skirt, folding it over the elastic.  You have just made an elastic sandwich. 7) Now on the outside of the skirt stitch just below the elastic to make a faux casing (you will stitch through both the fashion fabric and the lining, but NOT the elastic). This is what it looks like when it is all done.

Notice the two lines of stitching on the inside, but just one line of stitching on the outside.  The technique worked like a charm.  Here is a closer look.

Since it was a sheer knit, I decided not to hem neither the skirt or the lining, Yay!

As you can see, I have just a tiny bit of fabric leftover.  I think it will find its way into a top of some sort.

Here we are at dinner.  Can you tell who is 50 this year?  One of us in the picture is closer to 45 than 50, but we are not telling .

After looking at this picture, I think I should have made my skirt shorter….darn it.  Oh, Rock of Ages was a hoot.  We sang along to all the songs and had a grand old time time!

 

A stretch denim should work, right?

As I mentioned in my last post, my niece Rachel is getting married January 12th, so that means I need a new outfit right? I am also the photographer, so I need an outfit I can move up, down and all around in. After looking through my pattern stash, this Vogue 8837 skirt caught my eye for its simple lines.

I have some great suede like knit that has been aging in my stash for a while that I think will work up great in it. But, I really wanted to work my way through the pattern first before I put scissors to said fabric. I found this stretch denim in my stash. It should work, right?

Due to the fussy nature of the flocked print, I decided to cut the front and back on the fold to eliminate the center seam.  I also thought that it would give me a little more side seam allowance, 5/8″ on each side to be exact.  The skirt sizing is small, medium, large. I cut out a medium. The skirt construction is fairly straightforward.  One of the things I really like about the skirt is that the first thing you do is hem the front and back panels.  Raise your hand if you like to hem first, because how long does something hang out in your sewing room just waiting for a hem?  I know, right?  Or is that just me?  Anyway, back to my test skirt.  The elastic application in this skirt is pretty cool too, and something I have not done before.   I don’t even think I can explain it, but basically you stitch the elastic to the top of the yoke facing and then stitch through all thicknesses for a faux casing.  Pretty slick….except the elastic I used is older than dirt…no really, I am pretty sure dirt was here first.  I cut the elastic to the correct comfortable length for my waist and stitched it into the waist yoke.  When I tried it on, it fit nicely.  Yay, done!   Wait, not so fast, each time I tried the skirt on and moved around in it, the elastic began to fail.  So by the time I got all dressed up to take a picture, the skirt was hanging off my hips.  I “fixed” it by stitching some clear elastic on the inside of the waist faux casing, but it is not really as snug as I would like it.  The photo above doesn’t show the clothes pin at the back of the skirt keeping it on my dress form.  Anyway, it still looks good with my new black silk top that I wrote about here.

I plan on working it up in the stretch knit that I have, but this time I will use newer elastic. I will let you know how it goes.

One More Peasant Top

You might remember when I made my first peasant top that I was not sold on it straight away. However, every time I wear it I get compliments, and the top has started to grow on me. Enough so that I decided that this Style Arc pattern was worthy of my Oscar de la Renta black silk. One thing I didn’t like about the pattern the first time around was the excess fabric at the side seams, so I re-drafted them. I measured in 2 inches at the waist and then tapered from the armysce and the hem to draw the new side seam.

I used ribbon for the neck-tie instead of the self fabric tie called for in the pattern.

Due to the embossed nature of the fabric, I used silk organza to interface the slit facing instead of fuseable.    The construction of the opening was somewhat confusing.  Not that they were wrong, just sparse.  If I was a new sewist I would have been like “huh?”  As it was, I figured it out and it turned out just fine.  As I, and many more in blog-land have mentioned, Style Arc construction directions are, well, they are limited.  Much like Burda Style patterns.

I also decided not to put the elastic in the sleeves, but used a ruffle trim instead.  All I did was hem the sleeve and then stitched on the trim.

I love how the trim has the same ribbon as the ribbon I used for the tie.  I found the trim at JoAnn’s.

Overall, I am happy with how this turned out.  I think I will get a lot of use out of it.  It will look great with a black wool skirt, tights and boots.

Next up, an outfit for my niece’s wedding on January 12th.  I need something warm, as it is in an old fruit cold storage building and comfortable, as I am the photographer…..I have a few ideas.  I think I will make this Vogue 8837 skirt.

And McCall’s 6399 top.

Ready, set, go!

Now we return you to your regular programing

It’s done!  Finally.  When I started this table runner in June, I was so smug proud of myself for starting a Christmas item 6 months ahead of Christmas.  I figured that it would be done and waiting to be put on the table for Christmas by July.  This table runner was the project for my American Sewing Guild (ASG) all day retreat the first Saturday in June.  A great day of friends, sewing and eating.  Have you joined an ASG chapter?  If not, I encourage you to check ASG out.  There are chapters all over the country.  I look forward to our monthly meetings very much.  Anyway, back to the table runner.  Here is the pattern.  It is not as hard as it looks and it was lots of fun to look at all of the different fabric combinations my ASG sisters came up with.  I went with Christmas cowboy boots.

Well, after that fun day in June, I worked on this one more time and then, there it sat in my sewing room…..mocking me.  I was determined to get this on my table for Christmas, so all other sewing was stopped to get this baby done.  And here it is.

Let the garment sewing resume!  My black silk peasant top is waiting….

Any garment sewing getting done by you all or is it all Christmas, all the time?